By the time anybody became interested in Lance Thomas’ taste in jewelry, he already had been gone from college basketball more than two years. He’d played some in the NBA’s D-League, and more than anyone might have expected in the NBA itself.

So it stood to reason if the NCAA came calling to ask about how he came by the $30,000 he spent as a down payment on some custom-made jewelry during the middle of his senior season with the Duke Blue Devils, or how he expected to come up with the more than $60 grand he owed the jeweler to pay off the financing on his purchase, Thomas would present them with what amounted to a four-word answer:

None of your business.

His extravagance would never have been discovered had Thomas not been sued by the self-described “celebrity jeweler” where he’d made his purchase, Rafaello & Co. of New York. The company brought suit in Texas last September alleging Thomas had failed to pay his bill—originally due within 15 days—after taking possession of the product.

Thomas is guilty of foolishness, perhaps even stupidity, on a lot of fronts here. First there’s a matter of blowing that much cash on something you can’t live in or drive. Gracious, even the movie stars borrow their biggest jewelry pieces on Oscar night. And they’re getting by on a good bit more than what is afforded a college athlete.

There’s also the matter of getting himself dragged into court, thus shining a backward spotlight on the ludicrous proposition of a college student spending nearly six figures on a pure luxury item and putting Duke in the position of ultimately having to defend itself against an NCAA investigation into Thomas’ activities.

Whether or not he was guilty of an NCAA violation at the time all this occurred, though, was never going to be established given the time that lapsed from the point of purchase until Rafaello’s suit was publicized. The jeweler had no reason or obligation to disclose its business practices to the NCAA. And Thomas had no reason or obligation to reveal how or why he was so dumb with his money.

There’ll be lots of howls about how Duke is getting another call here, as though Thomas had jumped in front of an onrushing ballhandler and drawn a dubious charge. Thomas and the Devils went on to win the NCAA championship in 2010, and any finding against him might have imperiled that title. It's hard to imagine anyone at Duke ever sweated the possibility of bringing down a banner. The NCAA had about as much chance to prove wrongdoing here as a 16 seed does against a No. 1.

Unless the folks from Raffaello want to get all chatty, we’ll never understand why anyone in any business would look at a college kid and fork over a product worth considerably more than the average 3-bedroom house in San Antonio.

We'll never be comfortable with the intimation that a young man from a working family who'd spent four years on a full college scholarship would have been able to come up with the $30,000 he used as a down payment only by nefarious means.

We’ll certainly never believe anyone with access to a computer would encounter Thomas and conclude he deserved his line of credit on the basis he soon would be playing in the National Basketball Association. At the time he bought his diamonds, he was averaging 5.9 points. It took him nearly two years in the D-League to eventually play his way into the NBA.

You know how long you have to play in the D-League to afford six figures’ worth of jewelry?

About four years.

And that’s if you don’t eat, buy clothes and live rent-free with relatives.